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Unless there is some remarkable advance in medical technology between now and the year 2092, I will not live to see 2093. The oldest known human, Jeanne Calment, died at the age of 122 in 1997. So unless I outlive the longest-lived human, I am doomed. Keep in mind, for me to outlive her would mean that my lifespan would exceed that of the preceding 106+ billion people who have lived on the planet. I don’t like those odds. However, I plan to do my best to beat them.

That’s why, like Khrushchev, I will bury you. I won’t be happy, of course, I’ll feel terrible. But it wasn’t anything I did. In fact, it was a lot of things I didn’t do that made the difference between us. Some of them I had already started to do in 2007. Some of them were things I picked up doing later in my life. Sure, I should have done them sooner, but at least I started doing them eventually. Some of these were things I never did in the first place, which helped me even more. I actually hoped that you would start doing them too. So why will I bury you? Simple… because I:

• always, always, always wear a seatbelt.
• don’t eat meat except on rare occasions.
• always stay positive.
• am the master of my thoughts. I control them; they never control me.
  never skip breakfast.
• eat organic foods when available, natural when they aren’t and never touch any sort of artificially created foodstuffs.
• never add salt to my food.
• make at least 50% of my diet raw vegetables and fruits.
• steer clear of drugs.
• don’t smoke.
• don’t keep a gun in the house.
• run at least 3 times a week at a reasonable pace.
• do moderate weight training.
• have a positive outlook on life.
• do not work in a job that I hate. In fact, I love my job.
• am no longer afraid of money and give it no power over me.
• made a decision to be free of money, have that goal written down and carry it with me everywhere.
• treasure my time with my family.
• take care of my health by making regular visits to the doctor.
• floss.
• drink alcohol in moderation.
• never drink and drive.
• understand that the root of all suffering was craving.
• no longer subscribe to militant atheism but instead allowed myself to believe in a gentler agnosticism, and most importantly not to obsess on a battle that’s really not relevant to my life.
• play with my kids.
• love my wife without reserve.
• maintained strong relationships with my extended family.
• give back to my community.
• never dwell on the past.
• never dream too much of the future.
• stay fully engaged in the present.
• am grateful
• do not watch TV.
• no longer have violent entertainment in my life.
• never read the news.
• eliminate toxic materials from my household.
• never stop learning new things.
• meditate daily.
• smile and laugh.
• spend time outdoors.
• surround myself with positive people.
• enjoy reading.
• dress for comfort.
• keep a clear and simple todo list.
• live up to my promises.
• forget slights against me.
• remember dates that are important to others.
• take my vitamins.
• get plenty of sun.
• breathe deeply at least once per day.
• quit drinking caffeine.
• never drink soda.
• celebrate holidays with enthusiasm.
• wake up early.
• sleep just enough to feel rested.
• relax.
• never overeat, but also never skip meals.
• steer clear of gossip.
• give to charity.
• do good deeds.
• am kind to the elderly.
• never compromise on my morals.
• live an ethical life in terms of how I treat my environment and other living things.
• focus on the distance.
• travel.
• don’t waste time on regret.
• remember that after 2093, I will only exist in memories. The memory of my children will be my immortality.
• never forget that this is not a trial life, or a starter life, or a dress rehearsal.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Like everyone else, I like to add a nice bit of high fructose corn syrup to my morning coffee to sweeten it up a bit.  There’s nothing like the taste of fermented cornstarch that’s been mixed with bacteria and genetically modified enzymes to add a little sweetness to my cup of joe.  And I definitely love a nice loaf of chemically sweetened bread.

Americans consume more high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) now than sugar.  It has become the sweetener of choice, whether the average consumer realizes it or not.  Even staples that you wouldn’t consider sweet - such as sandwich bread - are saturated with HFCS.  Sodas, juices, processed foods and almost every processed food item you can buy at your local supermarket is loaded with it.

When you are shopping for food, I think about 4 decisions have to be made before you buy something.  They are:

1. Do I find this food enjoyable to eat?  Is it tasty?
2. Is this food good for me and my health?
3. Can I afford this food?
4. Is this food easy to prepare?

The critical question becomes in what order you make these decisions.  For example, an exotic organic butternut squash soup with truffle shavings and a dollop of cream might pass test 1, maybe test 2, possibly not test 3 and mostly likely not test 4.  A Red Baron pizza might pass tests 1, 3 and 4 but be a resounding NO on test 2 for one person, but flunk test 1 for another.

Very few people will be able to go to the supermarket and buy all natural, all fresh and all cheap food.  Something usually gives.  Your organic apple juice comes from New Zealand.  Your all-natural milk costs half again as much as the store brand.  A big pile of raw veggies is going to take a lot longer to become soup than a can of Campbell’s Soup.

HFCS, however, is one ingredient that should make the decision process easier.  HFCS is a byproduct of corn, a crop that America produces in quantities far greater than any other country on Earth.  There is no particular health benefit to production of HFCS, and its production is actually far more complex than that of regular sugar.  It is all created through a complicated process of fermenting, adding bacteria and enzymes and chemical treatments in one of 16 different plants around the US.  While the debate over its health costs are not definitive, studies have shown that HFCS does not trigger the same “full” reflex as sugar, meaning you will eat more HFCS than you would an equivalent amount of sugar.  Rats fed large amounts of HFCS develop terrible health problems.  Shrinking of the testicles appeal to anyone?

If you are old enough to remember what sodas tasted like pre-HFCS, you may recall that sodas didn’t taste the same 30 years ago as they do today.  If you travel to Europe or Latin America, you will find that HFCS is practically non-existent in their foods.  Mexican Coca-Cola, which is sometimes available in New York, has a significantly sweeter, smoother and more pleasant taste than American sodas.

I challenge anyone who is even slightly concerned about HFCS to try this simple test.  Buy two loaves of bread, one with HFCS as the second or third ingredient (this is probably 90% of the bread in your local market!) and one without (this may be hard to find).  The bread with HFCS will be mushier, less flavorful and have more calories.  However, it will be cheaper in all likelihood.

So when you are shopping and trying to save money - and I doubt many people don’t try to shop without being aware of the prices of things - stop for a minute and consider what the long term effect might be of eating a product that is very sweet, heavily chemically treated, doesn’t actually taste that great and doesn’t satisfy your brain’s “appetite switch.”  You might eat a bit more of it.  You might get fatter, or develop diabetes, and how much will that cost you?

It’s fairly difficult to eliminate HFCS from your diet.  It is omnipresent.  However, it is possible and you will notice a difference in the quality and amount of food you eat if you do quit.  You’ll be satisfied with less and enjoy it more, and in the end that will save you money too.   Consider quitting cold turkey from high fructose corn syrup.  You won’t be sorry you did.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Over at MSN Money there’s an interesting article on saving titled “Go Vegetarian to Save Money”. Go read it – there’s another article at MSN on the same topic here. There’s a compelling case to be made that a vegetarian diet is superior, including reasons beyond those listed in the article.

• Vegetarianism tends to be healthier. Vegetarianism lowers your risk of heart disease, cancer and dementia. It can also help you lose weight. Of course, the benefits of a vegetarian diet are still dependent on the actions of the individual. Eating cheese pizzas all day makes you a vegetarian, but it won’t make you healthier.
• It’s better for the environment. “Replacing one 3.5-ounce serving of beef, one egg, and a 1-ounce serving of cheese each day with a mix of vegetables, fruit, beans, and whole grains would spare the need for 1.8 acres of cropland, 40 pounds of fertilizer, and 3 ounces of pesticides each year. It also would mean dumping 11,400 fewer pounds of animal manure into the environment each year.” However, you have to consider other factors. If you eat exotic imported nuts from Africa and California oranges, a lot of pollution is being created moving those items around the world.
• Vegetarianism is cheaper. As pointed out in the article, you can save money by avoiding meat somewhat or altogether.
• It’s less cruel. (Flash file)

One of the problems we have had as we reduce our meat consumption at home has been that in the past we tried to buy organic fruits and vegetables whenever possible. As anyone who has spent time in Whole Foods or Garden of Eden knows, this can be nightmarishly expensive. We also prefer natural or organic meats. Free-range organic-fed chicken is tasty, but it is terribly expensive.

So in this shorter-than-usual post, I will just pose the question: at what point do you eliminate a food from your diet, and what makes you do it? When we all learned in the 80s that tuna “killed dolphins” we ran shrieking away from it. When people hear about mad cow disease, that’s sometimes the tipping point to get them to quit eating beef. I quit eating my favorite brand of hummus when it hit $4 per small container in our local supermarket. I decided very arbitrarily to quit eating 99% of the pork products out there when I saw a brief little piece in the New York Times on what, exactly, a pig’s life is like pre-slaughter.

What are the “tipping points” that cause you to give up a type of food? Financial? Health? Environmental?

Popularity: 2% [?]

As I spent some time in an assisted living facility last week I thought about aging and money. Here are the two most important concepts I came away with:

1. At the end of your life, money and things are not important. Having friends and family and a rich store of memories will be more important than whether you ever owned a boat. This is the Hallmark Card thought that people bring up when talking about old age and death.
2. That having been said, the end of your life is a lot nicer if you have some money. I’m not talking about nicer in the sense of having HBO. I’m talking about having a nurse who’s going to change your bedpan when you ring the bell rather than being in an institution where they let you sit in your own crap for three hours because they are understaffed.

I really cringe from time to time thinking about how much money I am hoarding for some far-off "retirement". Unless my savings rate and return rate spike up dramatically in the next 10 years I’ll still work until my mid-60s regardless of what I do now. And of course I could get hit by the mythical bus any day, rendering much of my planning for my sunset years irrelevant (except of course in that these savings would help out my family, but I have life insurance for that and frankly even with savings and insurance Bubelah would have to go back to work). So the ugly little thought creeps into my mind that maybe I should be enjoying this money today. Not buying the latest plasma TV, necessarily, but spending it on a fancy private education for my son, or on illuminating vacations (pyramids, Great Wall, safaris) or on a beach home in Florida. With the amount of money my wife and I save it wouldn’t be an insignificant amount of extra money if we stopped saving tomorrow. That extra money would alter our lifestyle.

However, I think about what I saw last week and realized that if you don’t have lots and lots of money, things can go south quickly. I saw a very nice assisted living complex, filled with relatively happy looking seniors. There was a very pleasant restaurant-style cafeteria, activities and a very pleasant physical complex with bright halls, cheery rooms and clean surroundings. All of this comes at a price; my best understanding was that it runs more than $5000 a month in an area of the country where that is no small amount. To put that in perspective, to generate $5000 per month in net income would require a nest egg of $1,300,000 earning 6% interest (no sure thing unless you want lots of risk). “That’s not so bad”, you think. That means $5000 for basic care. No drug co-payments, no hospital stays, no extra assistant care - all of that is extra. “That’s fine, Medicare will cover that,” you say. I hope you are right, after all of your “fun” 60s and 70s and giving gifts to the grandkids and traveling to Spain and whatnot, just for a place to live. $1,300,000 in the bank when you are 80, for the sake of argument.

All of that might not even be that terrible except:

1. One or both of us might live far longer due to advances in medicine. Already people are living longer and longer due to artificial hearts, drugs, surgery, you name it. If I live to be 105, or 20 years past what I expect, won’t I run out of money? What happens when I’m 97 and the bank account is tapped out? I hope my son or other potential future children could help, but I may need care past what they could easily provide at home. What then? What if something even more ridiculous happens in the next 20 years (a cure for cancer, for example) and people start living to 120? 130?
2. One or both of us might have health issues, draining our savings. This might be as simple as needing additional nursing care for non-life-threatening conditions, or as awful as a long lingering illness.

So let’s assume that $2 million (a random large number) would last for 30 years after I reach 65 (remember, 20-25 years for me and 30-35 for Bubelah). How is it even remotely possible to think of saving for 40 years, 50 years of quality living? Is it possible? I sometimes doubt it, particularly considering costs may dip at first when we’re in our 60s and in decent health (assuming we don’t take that super-luxury cruise to Europe), but will probably spike back up again as health problems mount. Could you ever start drawing down on principal to boost your monthly income? Even if you don’t, the principal will rot away with inflation. 40 or 50 years is a long time to hope for $1,300,000+ to carry you. You would have to draw the principle down and hope that the month you drew out the last $18,000 (inflation, remember?) was the month you died.

I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe the answer is spend it while you’re young and hope that this country does something about elder care before you get there yourself…

Popularity: 2% [?]

In 2000, I weighed approximately 315 pounds. By 2006 I weighed 200, although this year I’m back up to 220 (baby fat – nothing like having a baby to ruin a diet/exercise plan)! But I have lost 100 pounds off of my maximum weight and kept it off. I wouldn’t say it was easy to do, but the rules to do it were very, very simple. There were three categories, and I’ll cover the first, diet, in this post. The other categories were exercise and overall discipline.

Diet

I went on the Atkins Low Carb Dietlow-carb diet

I think the problem most people have with Atkins is (a) your food selection becomes fairly limited and (b) they don’t follow his instructions. I lived that book’s instructions like they were gospel. Read the book and follow its instructions first, but I have a few tips in addition.

1. Eat lots of fish and chicken. You can do a lot of different things with fish and chicken in terms of preparation and spices. Turkey, beef and pork are a little trickier to work with. I love turkey so I didn’t mind eating it a lot, but I largely avoided beef and pork.

2. Keep lots of cheese for snacking. I like salty foods, so my biggest snack issue was dropping the Doritos. Cheese works much better as a snack food than meats or veggies.

3. Don’t ever touch bread or pasta. After I had been on low-carb for a while, “low-carb bread” and “low-carb pasta” started coming out. I still avoided them. I think part of the low-carb lifestyle is just that, a lifestyle. Reintroducing breads and pasta just puts you back in the mindset that they are legitimate food choices. They aren’t, ever, when you’re trying to do Atkins.

4. Drink a lot of liquids and if it helps curb cravings diet soda is OK. Atkins says you shouldn’t drink diet sodas – it enflames your sweet tooth and splenda/aspartame have unknown effects on the body’s chemistry. However, I still drank diet Coke when I was on Atkins and it helped with any cravings I had for sweets, so I think it’s a good substitute. I did introduce my 8 X 8 habit: 8 ounce cups of water 8 times per day. I was never a big water drinker prior to going on Atkins, but trust me – if you drink enough water, you will be full at least for a while.

5. Ricola

6. Don’t be embarrassed! I was a fervent evangelical for Atkins. Some people thought it was funny that a man was dieting, but I viewed it as something I could be proud of, particularly after I lost 100 pounds. Dieting shows willpower and determination. Fatness is a by-product of lack of will. I know, I know, some people have biological predispositions to obesity, yada yada. I am sure that’s the case, but 99% of us are just lazy.

7. Learn to cook. To survive I had to learn to cook. You can’t go on Atkins and eat hamburgers and cheese for two years. I became a bit of a gourmand during this time, whipping up all sorts of fancy fish dishes, chicken-and-veggie mixes and a lot of ‘modified’ dishes. You would be surprised how many good recipes can easily be altered by substituting diced cauliflower for rice, or shredded peppers in place of pasta.

Try following these steps in addition to the book. Exercise and mental discipline are also important steps which I will cover in future parts of this series.

Popularity: 5% [?]

I fight a mental battle over health, wealth and social responsibility all the time. Let me give a brief example. For my son’s room, we bought some blinds. These blinds were behind the curtain, and just there to block out the early morning sun so he could sleep a bit. After a while we realized they weren’t doing a good job. They were white, and thin, and didn’t block the bright blast of the early morning sunrise.

So we went and bought a second set of blackout shades. I took down the blinds and replaced them, and the room is much brighter. Here’s where the battle begins.

Health: I really want to de-clutter the house. I have no other windows where blinds would be particularly useful. Result: Throw out the blinds.

Wealth: I may need the blinds someday in the future. This exact situation has happened before - I threw out something and then needed it two months later and had to buy a new one. Result: Store the blinds somewhere in our cluttered storage room.

Social Responsibility: I may need the blinds in the future, but I doubt it. Maybe someone else needs them - maybe a neighbor, a family member. Throwing them away just adds to a huge trash mountain somewhere on the eastern seacoast, a thought that makes me sick. Result: Try to give the blinds away, probably with limited success (they are not heirloom blinds, after all) and they sit in the storage room.

Before I go any further, I know the answer is that I shouldn’t have bought them without thinking more about it in the first place. But it really fulfilled a particular need, they fit the window perfectly and my honest, reasoned thought was that all we needed was a light diffuser, not a blocker. I didn’t count on Little Buddy being such a light sleeper.

This mental battle is played out again and again. I know throwing out clutter adds to garbage. I have 10 old black binders I have not used in 5 years. I have no need for them. Yet I keep them, because I hate thinking of them sitting in a trash heap somewhere. However, the clutter they create is really annoying. Clutter ruins mental (and even impacts physical) health in my opinion. Yet throwing out the clutter may be wasteful, and it’s certainly not socially responsible.

So given a situation like this, what to do?

I try to take this approach these days: if I cannot instantly come up with a use for it, I have to throw it away. I kick myself about it, but throwing it away now or 10 years from now has the same end result for the environment, but very different results for me personally. And when I throw away big items I will think long and hard before buying my next big purchase. However, I think the battle will go on and on as long as I continue to buy new things. The secret is not to buy ANYTHING new, ever, but that’s hard to do. It’s a habit we work on, but it really involves undoing the habits of a lifetime… which is what personal improvement is all about, after all.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I recently went to the doctor for a full physical for the first time in three years. I waited so long because I always had something “more important” to do: busy with a new job, Bubelah was pregnant, Little Buddy had arrived. If you have a newborn at home, you feel like you’re at the doctor far too much. Between shots and colds and the other hazards of infanthood, a visit to the pediatrician on a weekly basis seems normal. So after visiting the doctor and finding out that nothing was wrong other than a cholesterol level higher than ideal (but still within normal ranges) and the fact that I was overweight, I realized I have to get started exercising regularly again. I’ve been exercising but intermittently, and a bad weightlifting episode a few weeks ago really set me back. These tips are almost ‘live’ for me, since I am applying them right now to try to get back in a routine.

Any exercise is better than none. I have always enjoyed running and lifting weights (although a very specific method to build core strength, not muscle mass) and not much else. Running, when you are doing it well, gives you a ‘high’. I have been trying to motivate myself to do push ups or more ‘muscle building’ weightlifting, and I have a lot of trouble with these exercises. I realized that I need to focus on exercise I enjoy, because even if it’s not as effective for my goals, they will work much better than a planned and skipped targeted exercise.

Take it easy. I made a huge mistake trying to ‘lift to failure’ a few weeks ago. Lifting to failure means that you lift the heaviest possible weights you can, for as long as you can maintain good form. The most common sort of weight training is set training, where you lift a moderate weight eight times, then pause, then repeat for as many sets as you are able (usually expected to be 2-4 sets). When I lifted to failure, I was sore for days and didn’t feel like exercising again for almost a week. Before you write that off as a mistake, understand that my intention was to start building muscle mass, and lifting to failure is a good way to do that. After one session I felt some noticeable improvement in my biceps. But the damage done to my workout program from skipping a week makes it a bad idea.

Set public goals. Setting public goals is an idea proposed by many self-improvement gurus. Leo at Zen Habits is a particular proponent of this idea. Make sure people know you are planning on running the next day. Often a mild embarrassment at missing your run and feeling a need to sheepishly defend your decision to skip is enough to make you pull yourself on out the door.

Get ready beforehand. Little Buddy is a light sleeper, and his nursery is right next to the study where I keep my running gear. If I don’t get the gear out the night before, I have to tiptoe with an insane amount of effort into the study to retrieve my socks and running shorts and shirts without waking him. Fear of waking him early, which means a long cranky day for him and for Bubelah, means that I might skip a workout if I forgot and left my gear in the study. So getting everything out and taking it downstairs to the living room the night before makes a big difference! Eat. I have made the mistake before of launching a diet and an exercise program at the same time. For me, at least, this is a bad idea. Weightlifting in particular requires fairly substantial food intake. I try not to alter my eating patterns and my exercise patterns at the same time.

Enjoy. Too often people view exercise as a chore, but every time I work out I feel better afterwards. Even in the ‘lift to failure’ episode above I had a great adrenaline rush afterwards. Try to look forward to working out instead of dreading it. I think these basic tips make it easy to get restarted after a layoff. There are other things that make it easier. For example, right now it’s hot and muggy in New Jersey, which makes my 5:30 AM runs very pleasant. The sun is just coming up, it’s not dry, which helps the lungs, and it’s warm, so light running gear is plenty. When it’s February and freezing I feel much less motivated to run. The weather is always a big motivator, even if you go to a gym. Who wants to drive to the gym in ice and snow, even if the gym is heated? So wish me luck in reestablishing my training program in running and weightlifting (running first, then weightlifting). My goal is to get back in competitive race shape. I haven’t run a competitive race in more than a year now, so I want to get back to that rather than the halfhearted jogging I’ve been doing lately. There’s my public goalsetting!

Popularity: 3% [?]